Besides his well-known comedy act and cult movies about, um, certain recreational activities, Tommy Chong has other interests, including restoring classic cars. His recent labor of love was a 1959 Jaguar Mark IX that sat in a driveway for 30 years.

“It’s the top of the line. It sat for a long time and I just had it refinished and redone,” he says proudly. “I kept the original paint. Everything is original.”

The iconic hippie stoner comedian recently spoke at length to Motor Trend about Cheech and Chong, his cars, and his surprising view on the nine months he spent in prison for distributing marijuana paraphernalia.

The 1959 Jag has the original engine, drivetrain, headliner, carpeting, wood, and tray tables. It was a gift from a friend last year. “I was admiring the car because I love old cars and he said, ‘If you love it, if you want it, you got it. It’s yours,'” he says. “That’s a good friend, isn’t it?”

The car had been taken apart but was in good condition aside from a couple of bumper dents. A new exhaust system was put in at the body shop, but the goal was to keep it original.

“I want to keep it as a driver for a while,” Chong says, giving the classic Jag an 8 rating. “What I want to do is do the old car bit, but I want to do it for charity — auction it off. It rides like a dream. Back in the ’50s they made cars to last, and the Jaguar had the same reputation as the Rolls Royce, so the ride and the prestige and the way it looks — it’s just a head-turner because it’s so clean and smooth.”

Chong has a side business with friend Evan Singer called Hippy Motors. “We restore cars. It started on my cars,” he says. “I’ve got a ’46 Oldsmobile army limousine. I put an electric motor in it, but it didn’t work out because we never had the proper batteries, so it’s sitting there without a motor. The body’s in perfect shape.”

The Oldsmobile was sitting in a garage in Gardena when Chong first noticed it. It reminded him of a 1941 Buick he grew up with. “So I went back to look at it and it turned out to be a very rare four-door army limousine, built during the war for the brass.”

He paid $4500 for the Oldsmobile. “It had been in some lady’s garage untouched for years. The guy in Gardena saw it and he owned a garage. There’s a whole car culture in Gardena — the lowrider car culture. I got into that through Cheech and Chong. So having a lowrider was perfect.”

Although he’s driven it a couple of times, it’s back in the garage. “It was running for a minute. I wanted to make it all electric, but we didn’t have the batteries, so it’s waiting for an engine,” Chong says. “I used to joke and say it was a hybrid – it was an electric motor, with six Mexicans pushing it. The trouble with electric cars was the old-fashioned batteries, you needed so many of them. It made the car so heavy, it was like moving a tank.”

Chong rates the Oldsmobile, which was featured in “High Times” magazine, a perfect 10. “It’s a big old limousine. It’s an easy 10.”

Chong’s daily driver is a 2007 Prius, while his wife Shelby drives a 2010 Prius. He also rates this car a perfect 10. “I wanted to go to Prius as soon as I heard about the hybrid. I see the future in electric. I saw it way back then,” he says, adding he immediately leased one when they came out. “This is my second one. I bought it. I love the Prius.”

One news story in particular helped convince Chong the Prius was no toy. “You know what made me buy it? The story about Al Gore’s son being pulled over going over 100 mph,” he laughs. “Electric cars and hybrids had that reputation of an electric toy, winding down and slow on hills. So when I heard about Al Gore’s son being busted for going over 100, I said, ‘I want that!’ It’s the closest to a Citroën. That was my favorite car of all time.”

It didn’t take much to get used to the Prius. “Don’t forget I drove Citroëns and they’re so much alike,” he says. “They’ve got the smooth ride, they’re very quiet, and it’s a funny-looking car. I love funny-looking cars.”

Chong sometimes trades rides with his son Paris, who drives the hybrid Silverado. “When I need a truck, I drive it; when he needs a car, we switch off,” Chong says. “I love pickup trucks and the Silverado being a hybrid is easy on gas, so you’re not always stopping at the gas station. The maintenance and upkeep is so nonexistent. The Silverado is just beautiful.”

Car he learned to drive in
Chong was born in Edmonton and raised in Calgary, where he learned to drive in his dad’s 1941 Buick Roadmaster.

“It was a straight 8-cylinder engine and the most beautiful ride. It rode just like a big old heavy car and it burned gas like crazy. But gas only cost 20 cents a gallon at the time. When gas went up to a quarter, it was a big scandal,” he says with a chuckle. “It was huge compared to all the other cars. It had that leaf spring, so when you went over country roads you just glided over them, you didn’t really bounce. It was a smooth ride.”

Chong says old cars like the Buick were built to drive on country roads. “The new cars today you couldn’t drive them on country roads, they would fall apart,” he says. “I was amazed that the tires didn’t blow as much. The cement was in the city but all the country roads were all gravel, so you had to learn how to drive. You were driving the car; it wasn’t driving you.”

First car bought

At 17, Chong bought his first car and favorite car, a 1928 Plymouth Roadster convertible he saw in car lot in Calgary, when he was working as a roofer. “It went for a few hundred bucks. It wasn’t a good long-distance car. It was just a city car, but it was a convertible,” he says. “I could reach back and pull the top up. It had a rumble seat. I loved that car. It had a truck motor.” He bought a 1955 Buick when he was married and lived in Vancouver.

First splurge car

Chong likes to compare his current Prius to his 1971 Citroën SM. “I owned a ’71 Citroën Maserati and the Citroën sedan,” he says. “The first Citroën I got, I got it brand-new when Cheech and Chong hit it big with the records. I paid $10,500 for it.”

Despite it being his first brand-new ride, this was the ’70s, and Chong soon picked up a hitchhiker. “I gave a hitchhiker a ride down in Mexico and he got into the car, he says, ‘Is this a new car? Sure is ugly!’ ” he laughs. “I love that honesty.”

Chong was living in Malibu at the time. He first saw a Citroën in Playboy magazine and had to have one. “It was the Car of the Year in Playboy magazine,” Chong says, joking he use to look at Playboy for the cars. “They gave it such good marks on comfort. I gave it to my gardener. I never really had room for it. I was moving around a lot. It was my driver for a few years and then the family got big and I got into a Chevy pickup.”

He did take one memorable road trip up the California coast in it. “I took my mom up to Santa Cruz. It was very uncommon. Just a few people had them. A guy in a small Mercedes coupe pulled along side me and we raced for about a mile and a half on the highway. He gave me that ‘Want to go for it?’ look,” Chong recounts as if it were yesterday. “We were coming home from Santa Cruz and and he beat me. We were neck and neck and he slowly pulled away from me.”

Favorite road trip

Chong loves road trips. “My dad was a distance truck driver and he always used to try to get my older brother to come with him. My older brother never wanted to go, so I would always volunteer,” Chong says. “So I grew up driving long distances in a freightliner, a big diesel truck when I was a kid. I love it. There’s a very meditative thing going on when you drive.”

Chong became a truck driver for a short time. By 1961 he quit and was the guitarist in a band called Little Daddy and the Bachelors. They had a gig in Vancouver so he and the piano player drove Chong’s 1953 Chevy Bel Air convertible from Calgary to Vancouver.

“We had to go across 500 miles of gravel road and I broke the frame by the front wheel in the mountains. It snapped and the wheel collapsed and tilted over to one side,” he says. “So we were stuck in the mountains but we were right near a garage.”

The garage mechanic lent them his tools. “I drove two holes into the broken part and I bolted a brace to hold it together and we drove it the rest of the way to Vancouver, through the mountains,” Chong says.

Chong’s favorite road trip occurred frequently in the early days of Cheech and Chong. “I used to drive from L.A. from Vancouver a lot because my mom and dad were living in Vancouver,” he says. “If you do two 12-hour days you can do it. I took my time, or you get in a groove and then you just don’t stop.”

Cheech and Chong spent 1970 playing little clubs all over Los Angeles, trying to make it in show business. “We got paid very, very little – $25 here, $50 there,” he says.

Their lives would change in 1971 when they got signed to Ode Records with legendary producer Lou Adler. Cheech and Chong went on to release comedy albums and the stoner movies they’re best known for, including the 1978 cult classic “Up in Smoke.”

Chong bought a 1965 MGB right after the comedy duo got signed. “We were really seriously at the end of our string,” he says. “Cheech’s girlfriend was threatening to kick him out. I was renting a duplex and we had no money. Then we got discovered by Lou Adler and he gave us $1000 apiece and I paid the rent and my now wife, my girlfriend at the time, found this little ’65 MGB.”

Right after buying the MGB, Chong took a road trip up to British Columbia. “I took everybody up to Vancouver in it – my three daughters at the time, Rae Dawn, Robbi, and Precious, and Shelby, my girlfriend, and myself ,” he says. “We all crammed into that little MGB and we stopped in Portland.”

Prison time

In 2003 Chong famously went to prison for nine months for conspiring to distribute marijuana paraphernalia. He was incarcerated in Taft, California and because he looked at it as a spiritual exercise, Chong enjoyed his time there.

“It was the best. It was life-changing. I talk about it in my show, too,” he says. “It worked out good because I used it as a religious retreat. You know what I did when I was in prison? Someone sent me the “I Ching,” so I got totally into that. I had a good time. It was almost tough to leave.”

Besides reading the “I Ching,” he participated in the sweat lodge. “The Native Americans had to go to court to win their right to worship in their own manner. Every federal prison has a sweat lodge. I loved it. Loved it,” he says. “It was life-changing. We had our own Indian grounds, a little area behind the prison where they grew trees and plants and it was like a protected area for animals. Animals used to come and birds used to perch right next to me.”

On Saturdays they would spend all day working to build the fire and put rocks in the sweat lodge. “It was the best, the best,” he says, adding, “It was prison-style – every once in a while the guards would come down, make us get out of the lodge and we’d have to stand there while they searched our sweat lodge.”

Chong spent a lot of time outside in the park-like area there. “We were like custodians of the place, so rather than being in prison, I spent my days in a park,” he says. “If you looked away from the prison, there were no bars, no fences, you were just in the desert. It was great.”

He also learned about gardening. “The sweat lodge leader had been in prison for 17 years. He was on his last five years and he was an excellent herbalist. He grew all the herbs in the garden. So we had thistles and rosemary and all the good stuff to make yourself healthy. We would make teas and we were allowed to have a fire, so we could cook food over a fire. I learned the native way.”

Chong, who is half Cantonese, wanted to learn the Lakota Sioux language while there, but never got around to it. “Being Chinese, apparently the Native American Indians came from China, they came across the Bering Strait,” he points out.

Cheech and Chong recently guest starred on “The Simpsons” and have been on the road with their “Get it Legal” act. Their next show is June 11 in San Bernardino. “Cheech and I and my wife Shelby have a stage show we’ve performing for two years now,” he says. “We play music, we dance salsa, we do all sorts of good things.”

Part of this reunion with Cheech was to “replenish” Chong’s bank account, he says. “The government took all my money and I was trying to make it back. We’re going to go back and make some movies. We’ve been getting a lot of offers,” Chong adds. “We animated our old record bits.” He’s hoping that project will be out this summer.

As for his views on pot, Chong does support legalizing it. “My approach is just from the humor stand point,” he says. “Although I am thinking of running for drug czar. Then I was reminded that it’s not an elected position. But I thought I can still run for it. I figured run for drug czar than run from drug czars.”